PRINCESS SMARTYPANTS (BABETTE COLE)

Princess Smartypants is an example of a children’s picture book which uses gender reversal to tell a story that would never really happen. What if women of high socio-economic status could choose their own marriage/non-marriage partners?

Princess Smartypants has been talked about quite a bit by children’s literature critics, though I personally feel it’s not as successful as it looks at first glance. It’s still notably, however, as an early example of reversal as a way of highlighting inequality.

Types of Archetypal Journeys

Heroes in stories will set out to accomplish one of the following 10 things. Here, of course, we have a story about number five:

1. The quest for identity

2. The epic journey to find the promised land/to found the good city

3. The quest for vengeance

4. The warrior’s journey to save his people

5. The search for love (to rescue the princess/damsel in distress)

6. The journey in search of knowledge

7. The tragic quest: penance or self-denial

8. The fool’s errand

9. The quest to rid the land of danger

10. The grail quest (the quest for human perfection)

Babette Cole subverts the reader’s expectation that the prince and princess will end up married. These days it doesn’t seem such a radical story at all, but that’s only because we’ve seen it before.

Not only that, but the scene in which the prince is made to go shopping with the Queen mother shows him humiliated, not just because of his crawling position, but because he is in the lingerie department, weighed down by a load of female undergarments. It’s impossible to view this scene as humbling without also acknowledging at some level that female undergarments are inherently funny and shameful.

However, back in the mid 1980s when Princess Smartypants was published, the world was seeing feminist inversions of classic tales for the first time.

WEAKNESS/NEED

Princess Smartypants has been born into a life with a rigid path; she must marry into royalty (and produce heirs).

DESIRE

However, she doesn’t want that life. She wants to remain single and buck conventional gender roles.

OPPONENT

The parents, who represent the entire culture of marital expectations

PLAN

She’ll vet some suitors, but she’ll set such enormous tasks that there’s no way they’ll be able to accomplish them.

BATTLE

The battle scenes comprise a large proportion of a picturebook, and sure enough the princes are put through a series of tasks which involve her scary pets or scary rides.

But ultimately, Princes Swashbuckle is able to accomplish all of these tasks. Princess Smartypants has lost the battle.

SELF-REVELATION

Except Prince Swashbuckle is not interested in her.

A ‘swashbuckler’ is an idealistic hero archetype. He rescues damsels in distress, defends the downtrodden, and in general saves the day

NEW EQUILIBRIUM